Buffalo's 802.11ac wireless router with 2.4GHz and 5GHZ support

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The Buffalo AirStation 1750 is a high-end router that provides the turn of speed any cutting-edge home or demanding installation requires. With triple-antenna 450Mbps support at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, four Gigabit LAN ports plus that WAN port, it looks like it should please early adopters' every wish.

Attempting to make connection a little easier is the Buffalo AOSS button, which is only of use for connecting other Buffalo client devices, such as the AirStation D1300 Media Bridge.

We liked

Without doubt, this is a fast router. The new 802.11ac mode certainly pushes the speed barrier at middle ranges, but existing 5GHz technologies can match it. Its 2.4GHz performance at 450Mbps is excellent, especially at distance and the middle range, while its standard 5GHz speeds are good.

The sheer range of wireless options here are impressive. There are comprehensive options for WAN configurations, and the selection of four Gigabit LAN ports are exactly what we'd want to see.

We disliked

The Buffalo web interface leaves a lot to be desired. While it'll be embraced by tech junkies for its comprehensive range of features and options with extensive logging options, even for experienced users its menu system is horrible to navigate. This makes it difficult to spot what you're trying to find or select.

More troublingly, it has fallen behind the consumer-friendly offerings from Fritz!Box, Asus and Western Digital, which all provide friendly-looking and interactive interfaces.

Despite its good performance, the 802.11ac seems wasted at this stage. Investing in a technology you can't take full advantage of at this point and yet is matched by existing technology doesn't make any sense, and is rather disappointing. The USB NAS failing to offer NTFS is an odd omission, since FAT 32 is so obviously limited these days in partition size and file size, which is going to hamper use.

It's also an odd point to finish on, but the supplied stands are also a terrible design, and are always falling off.

Final verdict

You'd be foolish to invest in any 802.11ac kit at this stage, but the technology shows promise and is the only way forward to increase speed beyond the existing 5GHz 802.11n standard. Beyond that, this is a very fast 2.4GHz router and a decent 5GHz router.

The AirStation™ 1750 Gigabit Dual Band Wireless Router is a versatile dual band solution, ideal for high speed data streaming. With two wireless radios for extreme performance and backward compatibility, AirStation™ 1750 Gigabit Dual Band Router supports 802.11ac and 802.11n, offering simultaneous transfer speeds up to 1.3 Gbps in the 5GHz spectrum and 450Mbps on the 2.4GHz band.802.11ac is the latest wireless standard offering speeds up to 3X faster than 802.11n.